The aim of the proposed effort is to develop revolutionary technology for hearing aids that will lead to a marked improvement in the ability of the hearing impaired to understand speech in noisy environments. Our focus is on improving the technology of acoustic sensing and processing of signals so as to minimize the influence of unwanted sounds. We will accomplish this by a highly coordinated team effort to ensure that the design parameters of each feature of the system are mutually optimized and are compatible. This effort may be viewed as having three closely interrelated areas of technology development: novel directional microphones, novel optical electronic readout, and novel signal processing.